Rate My Professor Jason Holliday

Holliday's research centers on population and evolutionary genomics in forest tree species, elucidating the genomic basis of climatic adaptation, transcriptional responses to abiotic stress, genotype-phenotype associations, conservation genetics, and genome-enabled breeding. He employs next-generation sequencing and landscape genomics to study adaptive traits such as growth and dormancy phenology, cold hardiness, and drought tolerance in widely distributed trees including black cottonwood (Populus), Sitka spruce, pines, and American chestnut. His work addresses challenges posed by anthropogenic climate change, predicting evolutionary potential, enhancing carbon sequestration forecasts, conserving genetic variation, and accelerating breeding for traits like blight resistance. Notable grants include a $1.5 million NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program award, a $2.5 million NSF Plant Genome Research Program grant for poplar hybrid genomics, USDA NIFA Climate Change Coordinated Agriculture Project funding as co-PI, and Genome Canada's AdapTree project as co-PI. Key publications encompass 'Adaptation, migration or extirpation: climate change outcomes for tree populations' (2008, Evolutionary Applications), 'Convergent local adaptation to climate in distantly related conifers' (2016, Science), 'Forest genomics: Advancing climate adaptation, forest health, productivity, and conservation' (2020, Evolutionary Applications), and 'Optimizing genomic selection for blight resistance in American chestnut backcross populations' (2020, Evolutionary Applications). Holliday teaches courses such as Plant Population Genomics and Genetics of Natural and Managed Populations, influencing graduate training in forest genomics.